The Journal of Ashley Magnus
by A.Hooligan
Summary: Webisode based. Ashley is reflecting on the events of the first four webisodes soon after they're over. Please be aware that Ashley swears in the doing.
1. Chapter 1 Home Ain't Sweet

No ownership. No profit.

Webisode based. Since there was no one mentioned as the house pilot for the Sanctuary, I decided that was probably part of Ashley's job. And I have named the butler: "Ntamqeh Dene" - Black Bear Man.

* * *

Hello. My name is Ashley.

My mother is 157 years old and ageless, if not immortal, and my father is a murdering, teleporting, time traveling psychopath – and I don't even know his last name. John my Mother calls him – with that remark about his whores I guess I don't even know if that's really his name. Hell, all I really know is that my Mother doesn't deny the psycho sired me, and I didn't even know he existed until today.

Last night.

Yesterday.

Whatever the hell that was.

And, if whatever the hell that was doesn't qualify me for official membership in the "Children Who Have Been Fucked Up By Their Parents" club, I don't know what would.

Oh, God – I want to kill that psycho freak!

And the idea of kicking my fucking oblivious mother straight into her next incarnation sounds pretty damned good right about now, too.

She never even asked me what happened. She never asked me what he did to me, if he hurt me – hell, not even what he said to me. Not even after Ntamqeh was out of recovery after surgery, awake and stable.

Nope – plenty of time to tell me to make the arrangements with the Professor to place Ghoul Boy Du Jour in his Institute before she goes into surgery. Plenty of time to tell me how she intends to invite Dr. Will 'Sasquatch-phobic" Zimmerman to work with her after she comes out of surgery, and plenty of time to tell me to round up Whinge-Meister Foss and have him help me transport tentacle boy to the Institute as soon as she's laid down the law about how I have to respect the stuck-up little head-shrinker, and go pick up nice clean clothes for the poor widdle man as soon as I get home from New York – but no time to so much as ask me if I'm all right.

And – I don't think I am.

And now I have to fly to New York, with passengers, and go over to Widdle Will's apartment and pack an overnight bag for him, too, before I can even try for any sleep. God, I'm dead on my feet and I don't know that I'm all right to fly. Hell - I don't think I'm all right period.

God – I don't think I am.


	2. Chapter 2 They Say It Gets Better

No ownership. No profit.

Webisode Ashley. By the way, I have named the butler: "Ntamqeh Dene" - Black Bear Man.

* * *

It's not getting any better. They say everything looks better in the morning – at least after you sleep on it – but that's a damned lie.

My friend Ernie is dead in front of me. I've been abducted by a murdering, terroristic psycho, and he's my father. No. No – the freak sired me. That's all. He's not my father. He never was my father. He never will be. Fathers raise children. They're part of a child's life – they shape those lives every day of that child's life. Ntamqeh is my father before that psycho. Mother's precious 'John' is nothing but a sperm donor. And he'll be an ex-sperm donor if I ever see him again. An ex-psycho. An ex-freak. Normal at last. **Dead** normal.

That freak killed Ernie – for fun. He killed him just to take me, and he could have gotten Ernie out of the way just as easily with a dart or a fist to the head. The psycho terrorized me. He touched me –

Oh, God.

He gets off on other people's pain and terror and blood. Literally. God, how literally. Did he have a hardon against your ass when he had his knife to your throat, Mom? Oh, but, you wouldn't know about that, would you, because you never asked your daughter what happened. You don't know that he told his pet ghoul-boy to kill me, twice, and the little freak did his best both times. You don't know that he took my silver pendant because he said I had 'imprinted' it – and he could use it to find me anywhere in time and space for the rest of my life. Forever. You don't know that he had that stuff that he said you made for him – drugs, chemicals, I don't know – I just know what it did to me.

But I'm never telling my Mother that, not even if she asks. I remember how she decided what happened one time before without ever asking me about it, even though I was there and she wasn't. And I got packed up and sent to boarding school for eight years. No way am I giving her the chance to dismiss this like it never happened to me.

Not that she'll ever ask. Or she'd ever listen.

She doesn't want to talk to me. She's been avoiding me all day, and finding things for me to do somewhere else when she can't. I don't think she even wants me around. She doesn't have any time for me and she won't make any.

And I have sickening feeling that if I ever said anything 'nice' about that psycho freak she was engaged to, she'd be all over it like a 9 year old blathering about Hannah Montana. And worse, so much worse, I get the feeling she expects me to say something nice, or at least 'proper' about 'my father.' It's like she's waiting for it. Well, you're gonna wait forever for that one, Mother Dearest.

And now I bet I'll have nightmares about that too. God – I couldn't even sleep when Henry and I got back from New York. I even tried the cup of hot tea that the freak himself suggested. And you have no idea how much I fucking hated doing that – much less how much I hated that it made the headache better just like the psycho said it would.

But I still couldn't fall asleep – not that caffeine ever keeps me up. I had a million-movie kaleidoscope of psycho freak going in my head, and it would not stop. I even considered a bullet for a couple of seconds – but… that's the coward's way. And I'm not a coward.

Not yet at least.

I finally had to take Benadryl just to get some rest and all I did was dream. Nightmares. For hours.

My own bed looks like a torture device to me now.

I tried to say something to my Mother – I guess I just wanted a hug. A little comfort. Something. Anything. Anything to show that she cared about how I was doing. All I got was a 'stiff upper lip' lecture and she sent me to see if Ntamqeh needed anything. Everything right back to 'business as usual': all interactions with Ashley will be proper, no emotional expressions will be made save when etiquette declares them appropriate, therefore no hugs for the daughter who's been terrorized by her father – she can work out her 'little fit of pique' in service to others per the Victorian standards for dealing with Grown But Unmarried Daughters.

God, I miss Barney so much more than I always have, right now.

He always told me – when I was little – that my Mom loved me: she was just born clueless about how and when to show it. He used to say that taking care of someone was the definition of love, according to my Mom – feeding them, clothing them, keeping a roof over their head, that stuff. And that was supposed to be enough to make me happy – to make anybody happy. Listening to them, caring about what they want and how they feel, caring if they're happy, instead of just thinking you've taken care of them so they ought to be happy and you can punish them if they aren't – Barney explained that that was all stuff my Mom didn't naturally think about, and I couldn't expect her to start thinking about it because it's all beyond her worldview and frame of reference. He said that she might not know it, and she certainly wouldn't believe it, but Mom's like everybody else – if it's outside her frame of reference her mind can't handle it, and it protects itself by refusing to let it exist for her. It's how people don't see the ghouls they trip over every day. Outside the frame of reference, mind can't handle it, delete the file off the mental hard drive, get on with the day.

I guess that means my reaction to meeting my father is beyond my Mom's frame of reference, too. And that's why she's acting like nothing worth discussing happened that night, and I ought to be happy not to discuss what actually happened.

God.

That's not my definition of love, and I'm not going along with it this time.


End file.
